06 May 2010

Below is a paragraph excerpted from the final paper I am currently writing for my Women, Culture and Society class. I chose to analyze the trans denying/hating/phobic arguments of radical feminists vs post-modern gender theorists who are trans-positive. See as I tear Janice G. Raymond (of "The Transsexual Empire: The Making of a She-Male" fame) a new one. As the title suggests, I pulled the last line for the version I'm handing in. Feminist theory is, as one friend put it, a blood sport when done well and I left some language in like this when the poor arguments truly warranted; this one, I admit, was purely emotional and had to go. Except on this here internet thingy, where I let the rage fly. And it sounds a little like: DON'T FUCK WITH MY FAMILY, YOU INSENSITIVE TWATWAFFLE. Enjoy:
Raymond also makes the attempt to bolster her argument for a binary history by invoking discussing individuals born biologically intersexed. Because, she states, they are typically “altered” after birth to fit into a binary sex category and then raised as that gender “have the history of being practically born as male or female and those who are altered later in life have their body surgically conformed to their history. When and if they do undergo surgical change, they do not become the opposite sex after a long history of functioning and being treated differently,” (Ryamonds, pp. 114-115). This argument would logically mean that not only is gender socialized, but so is sex. It is once again a display of astonishing arrogance and blind dedication to social constructionism to state that a person may not authentically determine for themselves that surgical procedure performed on them without their consent produced an unfavorable result, purely due to their history of being socialized in a different sex and gender role. In this line of thinking, perhaps Ms. Raymond would also suggest that wrongly accused criminals should not, even when exonerated, be released from prison, because their history as a prisoner, regardless of that role being wrongly foisted upon them, cannot ever have a history that didn’t include socialization as a criminal. This would certainly fit both her inflexibility and her utter lack of compassion for the lived experiences of human beings with a history that varies from her own.